This version of the Tom Dula saga is one of three in the Frank C Brown Collection of North Carolina Folklore. It was collected from Mrs. Maude Minish Sutton of Lenoir, NC. Mrs. Sutton described it as "Dula's own song". She said that "Dula was again convicted and sentenced to die on May 1, 1868. His friends brought his banjo to him ins Statesville and he composed and sang the ballad about his banjo and the murder. It is in the same spirit as that in which MacPherson, Burns's hero,...sang 'beneath the gallows tree.'". It should be added that the long account of the execution published in the New York Herald the next day does not provide any supporting evidence that these events occured or that Dula was the author of this song.

TOM DULA'S LAMENT

I pick my banjo now,
I pick it on my knee.
This time tomorrow night
It'll be no more use to me.

The banjo's been my friend
In days both dark and ill.
A-layin' here in jail
It's helped me time to kill.

Poor Laura loved its tunes
When sitting 'neat a tree;
I'd play and sing to her
My head upon her knee.

Poor Laura loved me well,
She was both fond and true;
How deep her love for me
I never really knew.

Her black curl on my heart,
I'll meet my fatal doom,
As swift as she met hers
That dreadful evening's gloom

I've lived my life of sin,
I've had a bit of fun.
Come, Ann, kiss me goodby,
My race is nearly run.

A version obtained from Miss Edith Walker of Boone, NC in 1947, contained this verse:

One more night and one more day,
And where do you reckon I'll be?
Down in the valley, the valley so low,
Hanging on a white-oak tree.

rich r ^^